Dr. Larry Nassar appears during a video arraignment in Mason, Mich., on Nov. 22. Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics team doctor, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in his Michigan home with a girl aged 6 to 12. (AP Photo/David Eggert)

Not long after arriving at Michigan State in the fall of 1998, Tiffany Thomas, one of the nation’s top teenage softball prospects, began experiencing severe chronic lower back pain.

A Michigan State trainer recommended Thomas see the school’s team physician, Dr. Larry Nassar, who also served as USA Gymnastics team doctor for the U.S. women’s Olympic and national teams.

“They told me he was a world-renowned physician and trained Olympic athletes for the USA Gymnastics team,” Thomas said, referring to the training staff. “What they did not tell me is that he is a serial sexual predator and a pedophile.”

It was during that first exam, Thomas said, that Nassar inserted his bare, ungloved finger into her vagina, performing a procedure the doctor described as “inter-vaginal adjustments.”

Nassar continued to perform the procedure more than a dozen times between 1998 and 2001, a period of ongoing sexual abuse that continues to haunt Thomas nearly 20 years later.

“The abuse I suffered at the hands of Dr. Nassar created a cloud over my life that I fear will never leave,” she said Wednesday.

Now married and going by Tiffany Lopez, the former All-America outfielder for Jurupa Valley High in Riverside County filed a 15-count suit against Nassar and Michigan State in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, alleging sexual assault and battery, abuse and harassment. The suit also alleges that after Lopez reported the sexual abuse to the university’s top women’s sports trainer in 2000 she was “intimidated, coerced, and threatened by” high-ranking Spartan training staff members.

A “concerted effort of MSU and its employees to conceal sexual abuse, intimidate (Lopez) and continue to allow Nassar to have unfettered sexual access to athletes, as well as patients, student athletes, and/or minor children in his care; all done in order to protect MSU’s reputation and protect its funding from donors and the government,” said John C. Manly, Lopez’s Irvine-based attorney. “The most significant case against Michigan State to date.”

Manly said the Lopez suit also disproves previous claims by Michigan State officials that the university was not informed of allegations of sexual misconduct until 2014.

Michigan State’s Title IX office investigated Nassar in 2014 after a woman said he sexually assaulted her during an exam. Nassar was cleared by the investigation. The Ingham County prosecuting attorney’s office also declined to press charges following a university police investigation into the incident.

Jason Cody, Michigan State’s crisis communications manager and public affairs specialist, said the university has vigorously investigated all charges against Nassar, who was dismissed by the school in September.

“While we have not been served with any lawsuit and therefore are unable to comment on any potential litigation, I can tell you we take allegations of sexual abuse very seriously,” Cody said in a statement to the Register, referring to the Lopez suit. “Our police, the lead investigative agency in the Nassar case, are devoting significant resources to the criminal investigation against him and are vigorously reviewing all complaints and working through them with the state attorney general’s office and federal U.S. attorney’s office.

“After taking a report of alleged sexual assault against Nassar on Aug. 29, MSUPD detectives immediately began an investigation and notified our administration. Nassar was immediately reassigned from all of his clinical duties. The university fired Nassar on Sept. 20. All of the investigations are being handled by MSUPD’s Special Victims Unit with more than a dozen investigators assigned to the cases.

“We will continue to work with the attorney general and other law enforcement partners as the criminal investigation moves forward.”

The Lopez case is the latest legal setback for Nassar. With more than 65 women claiming they were molested by the doctor, he is at the center of one of the biggest sexual abuse cases in American sports history that has tarnished a decade of Olympic and World Championships domination by USA Gymnastics.

Nassar has denied any wrongdoing.

In September a former Olympic medal-winning gymnast filed suit in Sacramento County Superior Court against Nassar; USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body, and the organization’s last three presidents, alleging she was repeatedly sexually abused by the doctor between 1996 through 2000.

That suit alleges Nassar, part of the Team USA medical staff from 1986 to September 2015, groped and fondled the gymnast from the time she was 12 or 13 until she was 18. The suit alleges sexual assault, battery violence and harassment by Nassar and that USA Gymnastics and its top officials were negligent in their hiring, retention and supervision of Nassar and for failing to warn gymnasts and their parents of Nassar’s alleged predatory behavior.

Another former U.S. national team gymnast filed a similar suit against Nassar and USA Gymnastics in Los Angeles Superior Court in October, accusing Nassar of repeatedly sexually abusing her between 2006-11. Former U.S. Olympic team coach Bela Karolyi and his wife Martha, the longtime U.S. national team director, and other top USA Gymnastics officials are also named in the suit. The suit alleges that some of the sexual abuse by Nassar took place during U.S. national team training camps at USA Gymnastics’ longtime training center on a Texas ranch owned and operated by the Karolyis.

The Karolyis “had knowledge of inappropriate conduct and molestations committed by (Nassar) before and during his employment, yet chose to allow him to remain unsupervised where he sexually abused plaintiff,” according to the suit.

Michigan’s attorney general’s office charged Nassar in November with three counts of first degree sexual conduct with a person under the age of 13.

Nassar was arrested last week by federal law enforcement on child pornography charges. Nassar between 2003 and 2016 possessed at least one computer file or disk with thousands of images of child pornography, according to the indictment. Some of the images were of a person under the age of 12, federal officials said. Nassar is being held without bond.

At least 50 women have filed complaints against Nassar with the Michigan State university police, according to Stephen R. Drew, an attorney representing Nassar’s alleged victims in Michigan.

Lopez was one of only four players to start all 11 games for the U.S. at the Junior World Championships in 1999, leading Team USA in doubles en route to capturing the silver medal.

She shared the same dream that drove many of Nassar’s other alleged victims.

“Like millions of young girls I grew up playing sports with the dream that someday I could represent my country as an Olympic athlete,” Lopez said. “My dream turned into a nightmare.”

Lopez had been in East Lansing only a short time when her back pain led to her first exam by Nassar.

“I believed that I could trust Dr. Nassar,” Lopez said. “But almost immediately he began to do things that were wrong for a doctor to do.”

The doctor told her to remove her pants and panties and then with the softball team’s trainer standing nearby, Nassar inserted his hand into her vagina, telling her “this treatment would alleviate my lower back pain,” Lopez said.

As Nassar began the procedure, Lopez said she looked at the trainer.

“I didn’t question Dr. Nassar,” Lopez said. “I do remember looking to my trainer and kind of giving her the big-eyes stare like, ‘Is this OK?’ You know, without saying anything, and she kind of looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and shrugged me off.”

The trainer was Henna Shah. Shah did not respond to requests for comment.

Lopez said she confronted Shah after the first incident.

“She kind of laughed me off and said if you feel that uncomfortable you should go and speak to my supervisor,” Lopez said.

The supervisor, Lopez said, “dismissed my concerns and told me what Dr. Nassar was doing was normal. I will never forget the supervisor dismissed my complaints and basically treated me as though I was crazy. She indicated that Dr. Nassar used this procedure with many female athletes from a variety of sports and that he was providing me with the best medical care possible.”

The supervisor was MSU trainer Destiny Teachnor-Hauk. Teachnor-Hauk, who remains on the Michigan State staff, did not respond to interview requests.

While Nassar and Michigan State training staff told Lopez Nassar’s treatments would “improve my performance on the field,” Lopez said the doctor’s actions were “for his sexual gratification, not to facilitate my healing.”

That belief was reinforced, Lopez said, during a tournament in Florida in March 2000 when she approached a Michigan State trainer new to the softball team.

“I was in a lot of pain,” Lopez said. “I was crying and in a lot of pain and just asking (the trainer) to help alleviate something, ‘can you do something like Dr. Nassar does and try and manipulate my back?’ And I told her what he did and she gasped and she said I’m not doing that do you, and I remember her crying with me because I had shared what he had been doing and she advised that I go to her supervisor.”

The trainer was Lianna Hadden. Hadden, who is still at MSU, declined comment when reached Wednesday.

Again Lopez met with Teachnor-Hauk.

“And I remember sitting on the bleachers in Jenison Fieldhouse with the supervisor trainer and she gave me the ‘What do you want now?’ and rolled her eyes like she had no time for me. And I told her my story she says ‘you understand he’s a world-renowned doctor. He treats elite athletes like yourself. You’re getting the best treatment possible. He does this to all the other athletes. You either suck it up or you don’t play.’ And I unfortunately let it die.

“Initially I was mad. She didn’t believe me. She disregarded what I had to say. I felt like I was crazy. She made me as though I was crazy, as though I was making this up.”

Lopez left Michigan State in 2001 without finishing her degree. She married, started a family and settled in the San Gabriel Valley. But the alleged abuse by Nassar and the possibility there were other victims continued to haunt her.

“I feel guilty not because I did anything wrong, but because I was not able to come forward sooner and perhaps protect other girls from Dr. Nassar,” Lopez said. “When I heard Dr. Nassar was arrested on molestation and child pornography charges I realized that I must come forward and tell my story. I was betrayed not only by Dr. Nassar but by Michigan State University, an institution that was more interested in defending its reputation than in protecting the young people they had a duty to protect.”

She said she felt the need “to apologize to all the victims. I felt like I wish I could have did more but I know I did what I could and I hope Dr. Nassar gets exactly what he deserves. I hope that he burns for this, for making us suffer all these years.

“He made you feel comfortable. He spoke about his family and his kids and his wife and his life and obviously abused our kindness.”

While Nassar’s alleged abuse had been in the headlines since September, it wasn’t until a few days before Thanksgiving that Lopez realized she wasn’t alone. She had just returned from grocery shopping.

“I walked into my home and the TV screen was on and there was no sound, the TV was muted and his picture was on the TV,” she said. “I dropped my groceries and yelled for my husband to come here. And he came running thinking something was wrong and it was. Because everything I thought had imagined this entire time was becoming very real. I saw his picture on the TV screen and I knew that I wasn’t dreaming and that he had done what I thought he did.”

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